Chapter 120: Vexton System Exploration

Chapter 120: Vexton System Exploration

Location: Magicon Empire; Song Duchy; Vexton System; BCS (VS) Stargazer

It’s been months of studying and learning new spells. I’ve finally settled into college life and things started to turn into routine. I’ve learned so many new spells that I can barely count them anymore!

Otherwise, things have been quiet. I’ve finally started to notice all those slight advances Tim made all the time, but I don’t think now is the right time for stuff like this… I think Tim noticed as well, as he has almost completely stopped. For now, we’re good friends and we’re both happy.

Speaking of Tim! I asked my cousin Vic if he was Timothy Silvani, and she confirmed. Which means she now owes me a favor! I didn’t tell Tim and the others that I know though, as it’s too funny to see all his slip-ups. He’s so bad at hiding his identity!

Other than that, I continue to meet Lisa Song. It’s refreshing to talk to her and to be just Sara without concealing parts of myself. Sure, I can do the same with my roommates but somehow, it’s just different with Lisa. She just understands some of my struggles better as she has the same ones.

After about a month and so many annoying Nobles who tried to connect to me, Lisa had enough of my constant complaining. She made a rather interesting proposal which I gladly accepted after some consideration and talks. I’m now officially part of her retinue, at least on paper. It changed nothing between the two of us, as we both know the truth, but it almost immediately stopped every Noble from approaching me. Sure, there are a few obligations, but so far, they’ve been fun. I went to dinner with important people and Lisa and I both went to a fashion show where we had front-row seats. I confess that I bought more than one expensive dress that evening.

Also, no one else exposed my real identity after Lisa did, which made everyone in my family very happy as they didn’t have to deal with any more fallouts.

Oh, and we had our first Gravity Ball matches. We completely wrecked the team of another local college and won most of our other games against colleges from planets close by. Currently, we’re standing undefeated at the top of the table! But we also haven’t played against Lisa’s team from RMA yet.

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Anyway, none of that is important right now, as I just made the final jump into the Vexton System – the star system we chose for our Exploration course mission!

The six of us are all standing on the bridge of the temporarily renamed BCS Stargazer and taking in the view beyond the window.

There are only four planets here and three of them are gas giants so completely useless for any kind of settlement. The second planet from the sun though looks promising. Sure, we’ll still check out the gas giants as our job is to explore the whole system. Who knows, there might be some rare resources. But I think our focus will be on the planet that even features an atmosphere from how things look.

“We’re being hailed,” Clara interrupts my thoughts and shakes everyone out of their stupor as well.

“Alright, showtime, guys. Lucy, how are our shields looking? Lydia, please take the call.” I call out orders and sit down on the captain’s chair.

Lucy just gives me a thumbs-up, and Lydia taps her console to take the call. I notice a hologram of a man in a Peacekeeper uniform appearing before her and decide to link into the audio.

His voice is very deep. “Greetings, Stargazer, I’m captain Tulip from system security. I’ve got you on my list as a student vessel from FBC. Can you confirm?”

“Good day to you, captain,” Lydia replies. “We’re indeed from FBC, here on a mission for the Exploration course. I’ll send you the permits and identification, one moment please.”

It takes a few seconds until the captain replies. “Got it, thank you. It’s been a while since we’ve had an Exploration course over here. Good luck, I’ll think you’re gonna have some fun here.” He actually winks at the end before saying goodbye. I wonder what that was about.

Lydia turns her seat around. “Okay, we’re checked in with system security. We’re free to do our thing whenever we’d like to start.”

Lucy gives her a high five while we others nod. “Oh, one more thing. I guess you all saw the wink at the end… He wished us good luck and told us we were going to have a lot of fun. But somehow, I think he was ironic… Does anyone have an idea? I know, we’re not supposed to know anything about the system here beforehand, but maybe someone heard something?”

We all shake our heads, then Nick clears his throat. “Hey, do you guys remember the look and grin Sam gave us when we told her that we wanted to explore the Vexton System? Maybe that’s connected? I guess there is something special here…”

I shake my head, I don’t remember… Too much was happening in between. Lucy tilts her head though. “I’m not sure… Maybe? Now that you said it, I vaguely remember something, but nothing specific. I guess we’ll see soon?”

Tim agrees. “Yeah, let’s just check it out and we’ll see. Even if it’s dangerous, it can’t be too dangerous as Sam wouldn’t have allowed us to go there.”

“You’re right,” I say. “So what should we check out first? I know we decided on this place because of the habitable planet, but how about we check out the other planets first? That leaves the best for last.”

The others agree with me, and I ask Clara to set a course for the outermost planet. Then we have to wait for a few hours until we arrive. Lucy decides to cook something in the meantime, and so we find ourselves in the dining room shortly after. After cooking, Lucy shows off her Telekinesis and floats the plates over to our table. She’s made burgers. How did she make them so fast?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Anyway, Lucy’s food was delicious as always, but now we’ve arrived at the outermost gas giant. It has the imaginative name of Vexton 4 and is also the biggest planet in the system. It’s deep blue in color with reddish-brown streaks through it. 7 moons are orbiting the planet, but from what I can see, they are only floating rocks.

“Clara, can you do a scan, please?”

She confirms, and the Stargazer’s sensors send out a few scanning pulses. It’s a good thing that Conor Valterion built this ship with sensors in mind. That way we don’t have to get close to the planet and can practically do a drive-by scan and that’s it. The Stargazer’s sensors are completely overkill, especially after my parents replaced them with new state-of-the-art sensors and kept their numbers the same. The Stargazer is practically a deep space scout now.

“And done. I’ll put the results on the main screen. It’s as we expected. Not much to gain…” A hologram of the planet with its moons appears before us. “The moons are as they look: pure stone, no valuable resources. It’s also way too cold out there for any kind of settlement. Sure, one could keep it warm with a lot of money, but what for? There’s nothing out there. The planet’s the same. There’s a lot of ice and a few rare materials. But the quantities are so low that it would be unreasonable to set up a mining operation.”

“Thanks for the summary, Clara. So, I guess we’ll head to the next planet?”

The others agree and Alina jumps up from her seat. She’s been rather quiet so far but now she’s full of energy. “I’ll start writing our report for Vexton 4! Sara, can you spare Clara for a moment? Her help would be great.”

“Sure, Clara’s more than capable of multitasking,” I reply with a grin. And multitask she does! While she’s helping Alina with the report, she’s also maneuvering the Stargazer toward the next gas giant in the system. Before that, we have to cross an asteroid belt though. Let’s see if we can find something interesting there…

“Sensors are on full power. We enter the asteroid belt any moment now.” Clara announces through the overhead speakers, and we ready ourselves at our stations. The front-facing window highlights the closest asteroids. They are big, almost bigger than the moons of Vexton 4. There’s also a lot of space between them. It’s a wonder that this is still called an asteroid belt. Now that we’re inside, it doesn’t look like a belt at all.

“Jackpot!” Clara calls out and highlights the left asteroid with a green border. “It’s almost pure tristanium. That’s worth a fortune.”

Tim starts frowning. “That doesn’t make sense… Why would they leave such an asteroid untouched? Also, if there’s one like this, there’s a good chance that there are more.”

“You are right, I just detected three more. They are the same, almost pure tristanium.”

I look at Tim. “What should we do? We could put it in our report and be done with it, but I’ve got the feeling that this would earn us a bad grade… Like you said, why didn’t they mine those asteroids?”

“What if we fly over and check one of them out?” Nick calls out, and everyone looks at him. “I mean, if they aren’t mined something has to be wrong with them. Let’s just take a look at what.” He shrugs.

It’s a good idea. We have everything we need here on the Stargazer. I nod at Nick. “Sounds like a plan. Tim, Alina, can you join him? Just take the yacht and don’t forget the spacewalker suits. Who knows what’s out there.”

Alina looks at me. “What about you?”

“I think it’s better if I stay here on the ship… If anything happens, I should be able to teleport you back aboard and then the ship somewhere else. Other than that, the three of you have all the magic you need. Tim with Space, you’ve got your A&D, and Nick specialized in investigative spells, so he should be able to find out what’s wrong with our asteroids.”

She nods. “Alright, if you say so… Let’s go boys, we have an asteroid to conquer.” That earns her a few laughs and they leave the bridge.

Ten minutes later, Tim connects the six of us to a Group Call spell, and the yacht leaves the hangar.

I decide to speak out loud despite the spell, as it would be pretty weird between Lucy, Lydia, and me if we’d just looked at each other while talking mentally. Or at least I think so. “Everything okay with you?”

Alina is the fastest to answer. “Yep, everything’s fine… We’re fifteen minutes out, so you can make yourself a coffee or something.”

I chuckle in reply but when I look at the others, I notice their pleading expressions. “Fine, I’ll get some….”

When I arrive back on the bridge with three steaming mugs floating before me, they both thank me and we return to watching the yacht. I timed it perfectly, as the smaller ship is just setting down on the tristanium asteroid.

The airlock opens a few minutes later, and Alina is the first one out. She looks ready for anything and after a quick check of the surroundings, she signals for Tim and Nick to join her outside. All three of them wear the bulky spacewalker suits and start walking away from the yacht.

Nick is the one to direct their movements. From time to time, he kneels to check the ground but every time he mumbles something incomprehensible and shakes his head.

Then, finally, he shouts in triumph. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

“You found something?” Tim asks from next to him.

“Yeah, it’s the first spot where the tristanium is close enough to the surface for my spell to reach. I’ll get started right away. Please step back a bit.”

Tim and Alina follow his instructions while Nick casts a spell. It looks like he’s magically drilling into the ground. A minute later, he casts another spell, and a cylinder-shaped piece of ground floats out of the hole he just drilled. I notice the glint of tristanium at the bottom of the cylinder.

Nick has it floating before him and waves Tim and Alina closer. “Can one of you take over the Telekinesis? The Analysis spell still takes my whole concentration…”

Alina nods, her massive helmet bobbing back and forth. “Sure, not that something will attack us here anyway.”

They count themselves in and make the switch. The cylinder barely even drops when Alina takes over the spell. Then Nick closes his eyes and holds one of his hands close to the tristanium without touching it.

Seconds later his eyes open wide, and he starts swearing. “Shit, shit, shit! Tim, get us back to the yacht, now!”

Tim doesn’t hesitate and casts a Teleportation spell. The three vanish from the asteroid’s surface and reappear inside the yacht. Clara reacts quickly as well and closes the airlock. Thirty seconds later, she has the yacht back in the air.

“What’s happening? Nick, what’s wrong?” I call out for the third time, then I remember that the spell collapsed due to the teleportation. Finally, Tim recasts his spell and I repeat my question for Nick.

He replies with a panicked voice. “It’s contaminated! The whole flippin’ asteroid is made out of contaminated tristanium. That stuff is highly radioactive. We need some decontamination once we’re back.”

I gulp. That sounds dangerous. How the hell were we allowed to go here?

“The spacewalker suits should have protected you, right?” Lucy asks.

She’s right! Maybe that’s why Sam didn’t forbid us from going here. I mean she drilled us for months to always use the spacewalker suits when we exit our ships.

“They should have,” Nick replies. “But I’d say better being safe than sorry.”

“I agree. But we don’t have a decontamination chamber or something similar. Lydia, can you call captain Tulip a call and ask for decontamination options? We might have to go through the yacht as well.”

She nods at me and leaves the Group Call spell. Then she gets to work. Five minutes later, she gives me a thumbs up. “They were only waiting for our call… Apparently, every student group here for Exploration lands on the asteroids sometime. They do have a decontamination chamber though. We’re also allowed to jump over to their station if we want to speed things up.”

I pass on the information to the three on the yacht and they agree that it’s better to jump there. So, I coordinate with Clara, and she brings the yacht close to the Stargazer. Then I encompass both ships with my space bubble and jump us over to the system security station.